China Cracking Down Harder on Web

Chinese President Hu Jintao launched a campaign on Monday to rid the country of "unhealthy" content and utilize the Web as a springboard for Communist Party doctrine. Actually, the news of late has been headed towards this situation as Chinese officials have blamed the Internet of everything from youth violence and crime to Genghis Kahn's invasion from Mongolia.

In news from Reuters via Yahoo! state television reported that the 24 member Communist Party Politburo discussed cleaning up the Internet and bringing the "unruly" media under firm propaganda controls. The gist of the statements made essentially called for Internet cultural units to develop a system of core social values or essentially providing the architecture for propaganda and control over what people hear and see via the Internet.

China's younger generation are many years removed culturally and politically from the hard party line of Chairman Mao and Jintao wants them back in line and under control. The old guard must be feeling threatened and with the Olympic Games coming up in 2008, the current political system will be on display for the whole world to see.

Rapid change in social and political systems always brings with it growing pains. China has been a relatively closed society for thousands of years. The communist doctrine there only exacerbates the tension and fear that is tearing at the world's most populated nation.

Recent crackdowns on pornography and "subversive" content were the precursors to a much stricter crackdown obviously. This is not good news for Google, Yahoo and others vested in the thriving Internet community in China. Recent news has been speckled with problems for the big two in dealing with the Chinese government. It appears that neither Google nor Yahoo! has a methodology in place to deal with the Chinese market.

A hard party line is not exactly what business in the west is looking for right now, as one company after another is packing up and heading for China in order to capitalize on the labor resources and growing markets there. Perhaps these industries could use a history lesson in dealing with this very old and disciplined culture. We may not agree with the Chinese government on many issues, but it is a historical certainty that moving too fast is not what China is about.

The Great Wall, 4000 miles long and 2500 years old. We don't have one of these and it took hundreds of years to build. It may take the big two a while to get back in if they get kicked.